a. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus of small dimensions intended for pulverising any sort of articles made of a frangible material, such as glass, porcelain, etc., particularly glass containers such as bottles and flagons.
B. Description of the Prior Art
A pulveriser is known from U.S. Pat. No. 3,756,520, in which a chute, arranged obliquely and closed at its upper part by a rubber screen, allows bottles to be fed towards a pulverising rotor. Such an arrangement is obviously dangerous in that the said screen is not sufficient to retain glass fragments which may be expelled by the rotor, and in addition because no mechanism prevents accidental introduction of a hand of the user into the machine, unless a chute of prohibitive length is provided. Moreover, the location of the rotor in respect to the direction of fall of the articles to be treated is not a satisfactory arrangement.
A device of different conception and comprising a baffle in the feed channel, in regard to which similar criticisms can be formulated, is likewise described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,889,886.
The present invention aims to provide a pulveriser of the type described which is easy and safe to use. The safety objective aims firstly to protect the user and secondly to protect the apparatus against incorrect handling. Protection of the user assumes that he cannot accidentally put his hand or his arm into the pulveriser while it is working and that glass fragments cannot be thrown out during pulverisation. All this must be achievable with an apparatus which carries out in an efficient manner the work expected from it and which is, moreover, compact.